20 Oct 2008 statement from the Russian Federation to the United states in relation to an alleged letter from the McCain campaign requesting a financial contrbution from Russia:

"We have received a letter from Senator John McCain requesting financial contribution to his Presidential campaign.

In this connection we would like to reiterate that Russian officials, the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations or the Russian Government do not finance political activity in foreign countries."

Wikileaks staff have verified the authenticity of the document. Obviously the statement is designed to undermine the McCain campaign and is an extremely interesting Russian intervention into US domestic politics. It remains to be seen whether the play, which lacks subtlety, will backfire and generate support for McCain.

According to the document metadata (which can be manipulated, though rarely is), the document was created by "INT10", underwent two revisions and was saved by "INT9" with a version of word is registered to organization "MID". Although Wikileaks normally removes metadata, we have not done so in this instance since the document is intended to be public and may be a significant political play by Russian intelligence.